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Latest entries from the Weather Journal blog
About Kevin
Kevin Myatt grew up in Arkansas to the tune of tornado sirens and the rhythm of hailstones, aspiring to be a meteorologist before his studies and career were turned to journalism instead. Though he often chases storms, he prefers living in the cooler, more tranquil weather of the Blue Ridge. He moved to Roanoke in 1999 to take a job on the copy desk of The Roanoke Times; writing headlines and editing copy is his principal work for the newspaper today.
Each May, Kevin assists Pulaski County High School / Virginia Tech meteorology instructor Dave Carroll in leading college and high school students to the Plains to observe severe weather firsthand. The accounts of many of his storm chases can be found here on the storm chasing page of his weather blog on roanoke.com.
Kevin was an editor for "Hurricanes and the Middle Atlantic States," a book written by D.C.-area weather enthusiast Rick Schwartz and published by Blue Diamond Books that documents hurricanes striking the mid-Atlantic states since colonial times.
The Weather Journal column began in 2003 and appears on Friday's Virginia section front in The Roanoke Times. The Weather Journal blog began in 2006 and follows weather day-by-day between the larger columns.
The plot thickens
By Kevin Myatt
The Roanoke Times
It's another winter cliffhanger for Southwest Virginia.
But this time, instead of being on the edge between rain and snow, or between snow and nothing, it looks like we'll be on the border between snow and ice.
There is always something that can go wrong with forecasts. Perhaps you've heard some of the buzz from forecasters in the New York City area laying an egg on this past weekend's winter storm.
The storm happened, it just came together a little later and pulled cold air in later than expected, so places such as Philadelphia and New York City got left out. Most people don't care about such meteorological details, they just want to know what's happening in their back yard.
With that fully in mind, I can say that at the time of this writing, it appears likely that Southwest Virginia will experience significant wintry precipitation beginning sometime overnight and continuing through much of Thursday.
A low-pressure system will develop along the Gulf Coast and move northeastward through the eastern Carolinas. It's a common path for significant winter storms in our area, but one that has failed to produce widespread wintry precipitation a couple of times already this winter.
The two big things that are different this time are (1) the precipitation shield should already be formed south of us and move into our area rather than having to develop over us and (2) there will be considerable cold air in place.
The biggest question marks surround the depth of that moisture field and the depth of the cold air.
The amount of moisture the low can drag northward will determine how much precipitation falls.
This system certainly doesn't appear to have the proper atmospheric dynamics to become a monster storm, but a decent slug of moisture could provide several inches of snow or some limb-breaking ice accumulations. Right now, it looks like something less than that.
The depth of the cold air will be critical in determining the type of precipitation. If the cold air can hang in deeply for a longer time, there will be more snow. If warm air from the south is able to override the cold air at the surface quickly, there will be a more rapid change to sleet, freezing rain or even possibly rain.
A good early bet on this storm would be that it would be one of those "crunchy" storms that provides a couple of inches of snow, a little sleet on top of that, with a thin layer of glaze to cap it off.
The earlier that sleet mixes in with the snow, the less total accumulation there will be. The longer the snow or sleet lasts, the less freezing rain we'll get.
In several years of watching winter weather locally, I've probably seen at least a dozen systems similar to this one. The pattern of winter precipitation is different with each one. So nothing that falls would really surprise me, though at this point, I would be a little stunned if this was a total miss.
Whatever happens with the snow and ice, very cold air is headed our way for the weekend.
I would not be surprised to see some lows in the single digits by Sunday or Monday.
Winter is strutting its hour upon the stage.
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